HOW TO FOCUS

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If you are photographing any type of room or interior, and would like to get as much of the room in focus as possible, try this:

Set your camera on a tripod, and compose your picture. Now, walk away from the camera into the room and divide up the room into "thirds". Between the camera and the far end of the room you should be able to estimate where to mentally divide up the space into 1/3 distances. For example, if your interior space from the camera to the far wall is 30 feet deep, find the location on the floor (or a piece of furniture) that is 10 feet away from the camera. This section is "one third" of the total depth of the room.

Go back to your camera, and now manually focus the lens to that place on the floor, or that piece of furniture that is (as in our example) 10 feet away from you. Now re-compose you picture, set your lens aperture number to f8 or f11 (Aperture Priority setting), and take the shot. Your resulting image should have the most even amount of foreground and background sharpness.

Other tips: f8 and f11 are usually the sharpest lens apertures. If you need the maximum depth of field possible, go to f22 or the highest aperture number that your lens is capable of. The trade-off is that the final image may not be as sharp as the same image taken at f8.

When doing interiors, always use your self-timer. The shake of your finger on the shutter button will compromise image sharpness. Instead of waiting the full 10 seconds for the shutter to be released, see if your camera allows for a 2 or 5 second self timer.

Finally, make sure your camera is set to Manual Focus. After you have focused on your "1/3" location, you don't want the camera to focus on some other location as soon as you take the photo (which it will do, if the camera remains on Auto Focus).

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